Bird is the Word

They don’t just fly over your house; they have flown into our vocabulary too. Not often for good reasons; not often for bad reasons.

In England young women are often referred to as birds. In the United States and Canada, young women are often called chicks. Women who have passed their peek are often referred to as old hens or old crows.

If someone keeps repeating something over and over we can refer to that person as a parrot. If your acquaintance is a stuck up, classless idiot, you might refer to him or her as a popinjay or a peacock.

Someone who is considered stupid is often called a bird brain. However, someone who is smart can be called a wise-old owl. But if someone is scared you call that person a chicken or chicken shit. If someone thinks of himself as sexually desirable, he pictures himself cock of the walk.

People who are crazy can be called loons or cuckoos. Or maybe they just go to Florida in the winter and are called snowbirds. Someone who uses cocaine is often called a snowbird as well. Someone who lives in Florida and also uses cocaine is called a dodo.

Throughout our country we have many supposed health experts who are really just quacks. Quacks are the magpies of medicine as they are stealing your money selling bird poop. Be an early bird and don’t let them ruffle your feathers.

If you go to quacks you’d better be eagle-eyed and watch them like a hawk so they don’t steal from you. If they do steal from you then go to the police and sing like a nightingale about their thievery. Maybe these people will be arrested and put in a birdcage so they can’t fly the coop.

The character of Mr. Potter in my favorite movie It’s a Wonderful Life was a vulture and certainly deserved the title of old coot. He was probably pigeon-toed too. He was a man who ate like a pig because he could not actually eat like a bird because, in reality, birds eat a lot! I don’t know if Mr. Potter liked to wet his beak from the expensive wines he enjoyed drinking.

I really wished George Bailey, the lead character in the movie, didn’t give a hoot about Mr. Potter but George acted like a silly goose by trying to borrow money from Mr. Potter. Yes, Mr. Potter was always feathering his nest with other people’s money. That man was a bad egg.

By the end of the movie George Bailey was flying like a bird when he found out how many friends he had and, hopefully, all the viewers truly hoped that Mr. Potter would wind up with a severe case of thrush at the end.

Frank Scoblete’s website is www.frankscoblete.com. His books are available from Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, Kindle, e-books and at bookstores.